


Ghost Town

by sariane



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Gen, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Transcript Available, audiofic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-30 19:36:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariane/pseuds/sariane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Ah, Night Vale. A town once shining with colorful citizens, beautiful desert scenery, and inexplicable lights in the sky. A town of angels, scientists, and hooded figures.</i>
</p><p> <i>A town that is now completely deserted.</i></p><p>A young woman wanders into Night Vale, where she investigates the completely empty town and sends out a cry for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Town

**Author's Note:**

> I've been curious about making some kind of podfic for awhile, and I was so inspired by Night Vale that I wanted to try my hand at my own episode. It was a great challenge, but it was also a ton of fun!
> 
> Warnings:  
> \- This fic is rated about the same as any Night Vale episode. It contains mention of blood.
> 
> \--  
> Weather: [“Nightvalean Greeting Song"](http://starstruck-pyromaniac.tumblr.com/post/64914744129/original-song-by-me-lyrics-beneath-the) by [Starstruck-Pyromaniac](http://starstruck-pyromaniac.tumblr.com/): <http://tindeck.com/listen/obsi>.
> 
> Music: Disparition, [disparition.info](http://disparition.info).
> 
> Written and narrated by [Sariane](http://sarriane.tumblr.com) (me!).  
> \--
> 
> Disclaimer: This podcast is a work of fanfiction inspired by the podcast “Welcome to Night Vale” by Commonplace Books. It is for fun, not profit.

**Length:** 19:59,  **Size:** 18.41 MB

 **Download MP3** : [Box.com](https://app.box.com/s/jtd931fk9v4teh1ahji0) | [Mediafire](http://www.mediafire.com/download/n86p6ool7lkgu3c/Ghost_Town.mp3)

 **Streaming:**[Box.com](https://app.box.com/s/jtd931fk9v4teh1ahji0) | [Mediafire](http://www.mediafire.com/listen/n86p6ool7lkgu3c/Ghost_Town.mp3) | [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/sarriane/ghost-town)

* * *

**TRANSCRIPT:**

Hello? Is anybody there? Is this broadcasting? Can anyone hear me?

Please, help me.

I think something's happened in this city. Something terrible.

I hope someone can hear this. This is the only way I know how to contact the outside world. All of the other studios were closed. If anyone is listening, please send help to Night Vale Community Radio, in the room with the sign on the door that reads --

**Welcome to Night Vale.**

_(THEME MUSIC: Selection from “The Ballad of Fiedler and Mundt” by Disparition.)_

Please, I need help.

If anyone is receiving this broadcast -- if there is anyone out there **to** receive this broadcast - I think something is terribly wrong in the city of Night Vale.

My name is Meredith Lane. I am not from here. I was driving through the desert on Route 800 on my way to visit some distant relations. The road was completely deserted. Just as I passed a sign declaring that I was halfway between the cities of Night Vale and Desert Bluffs, my car began to rattle and shake violently. It vibrated, emitting a loud humming noise that grew to an extremely high frequency.

Before I could stop, thick purple smoke began to rise, covering the windshield and all of the windows of my car and obscuring my vision. I found the tires spinning out of control, sending my car flying blindly across the pavement of the highway.

By a stroke of luck – if it was luck – I survived.

When I climbed out of my car, I tried to call for help. However, when I began to dial on my cell phone, the buttons melted off and fell to the ground, forming a puddle that smelled faintly of cabbage and dirty laundry. I had no choice but to walk towards one of the cities in hope of rescue. I flipped a coin to choose which one.

The walk to Night Vale through the sand wastes was long and hot. I had only one bottle of water, half full (or half empty, or filled with equal amounts of air and water, depending on your outlook on life), but I made it somehow.

On the way into town, I saw not a single soul. Not a car, or a truck, a bicycle, or even a tractor from the corn farm I passed on my way into town. I saw no farming equipment, no crops, not even, you know, a farmer.

Soon after, I came into town.

I am sorry to report that the city of Night Vale is **completely empty.**

I plead with anyone listening in: call for help. If not for my sake, do it for Night Vale. Something is wrong here. Something terrible.

The first building I saw in Night Vale was the Post Office. I went inside to call for help, but found no postal workers, people, or even mail! The walls were bloodstained and the echoes of screams long silenced rung in the halls. When I finally found an old-fashioned corded phone and held it to my ear, I was relieved. However, the phone would make no calls. I could not call 911. Instead of a dial tone, there was the ticking of clocks: _tick tock, tick tock, tick tock,_ growing louder and louder until I hung up the phone!

It seems that Night Vale is cut off from contact with the outside world. If anyone can hear this and your phones are working, please, call for help immediately!

After exiting the post office, I walked down the road, past apartment buildings, their walls oozing dark, red liquid, as trees ooze sap in the autumn. I saw not a single soul in the windows. Not on the street, or on the sidewalk. There were no birds, no barking dogs, or even cats. Nothing but my footsteps echoing against the hot black tarmac.

As for traffic – there was none. A number of cars sat abandoned on the street. None of them were running. They were all locked from the inside, seatbelts clicked into place, windows up, brake petals pressed down to the floor. I tried to open the door of a blue Toyota Corolla, but when my fingers touched the handle, I felt a cloud of self-doubt and crippling social anxiety come over me. The emotions and fears were overwhelming. I stepped back from the car, wondering: Why am I here? What is this place? Did I turn off the coffee maker before I left home?

If anyone can hear this, and you hear the sound of fire trucks racing down the road, please hope that they are not headed to my faraway home. Hope, instead, that they are headed to Night Vale, to rescue me, because they have heard my cries for help.

Next, I turned to Big Rico's Pizza, a brightly lit pizza parlor with a cheery façade and a family-friendly atmosphere. It was empty except for abandoned cups and plates on the bloody surfaces of the shop.

I was lucky, listeners, for some hard-working, underpaid pizzeria employee had left baking in the oven a large pizza. Bubbling with cheese and sauce, it was topped with pepperoni, mushrooms, pineapple, strange unidentifiable small red spores, pulsating green cubes of a jello-like substance, and delicate bones from small animals. Between you and me, listeners, I picked the pineapple off.

It was one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten. No one does a slice like Big Rico's. **No one.**  

Next door to Big Rico’s was a laboratory. As I walked across the threshold and into the laboratory, I felt a chill run up my spine, over my head, around my neck, and across my shoulders. I did not let it dissuade me, however, and continued my investigation.

Listeners, there was something odd about that laboratory. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was something there. In the air, perhaps, or in the back of my mind. Whatever it was, it led me to a cluttered wooden desk covered with papers, pipe cleaners and pom-poms, poetry, a papaya, plywood, and pocketknives…things beginning with 'P.'

On the desk, I found the most extraordinary object. A photograph! It was a Polaroid picture with a slight pink tinge over the plastic. The subject of the Polaroid was a man wearing a purple polka-dotted polo shirt underneath a lab coat, holding a phone to one ear and rolling his eyes in protest at the photographer. The man had a pleasant face; pretty black hair tinged with grey, and polished teeth visible in his exasperated yet patient smile. He was **perfect**.

There was no clue to the identity of this man, or explanation of any sort to the lack of people in the town.

Which brings me yet again to the question: Where are the people of Night Vale? Why is this town, apparently teeming with citizens one moment, completely uninhabited the next? Did they leave of their own free will? Were they taken? Or did they all disappear?

How do I even know that this is the only city suffering from such a loss? I have had no outside contact since I was stranded here. Can anyone even hear me?

This is the only place I knew to go that might have some outside contact.

After I left the laboratory, I walked through a vacant car lot, by Night Vale Public Library, and around Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Fun Complex. Then, I passed an Arby's. Feeling the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, as though I was being watched, I looked up at the sky one hundred feet above the Arby's.

 I saw **nothing**.

But the eerie feeling didn’t pass, so I listened to my gut. I ran. I ran as fast as I could, past the Moonlite All-Night Diner, past the Night Vale High School, and past the Ralph's, where I happened upon the Dog Park.

There was an eerie silencing hanging over the Dog Park. It was a little green, maybe brown in some places, but definitely eerie all over. I heard no barking from within the Dog Park, and no sign that anyone was inside or ever had been. When I tried to yell over the walls to see if anyone could hear me, my voice faded and did not carry. Every sound I made, be it my footsteps on the concrete or my sad attempts at whistling a cheery tune, were all swallowed by the Dog Park! I hurried past, fearing for my safety.

That's how I came to be here, listeners.

I saw the tower of the radio station. The front door was propped open. I wondered if that meant that someone was inside.

The sign on the door read "Night Vale Community Radio," at least, it did before it shifted into another language. Portuguese, I think. I'm not sure. I took French in college.

Inside this building, I found offices, all of them empty. So were the women's bathroom, the men's bathroom (which smelled strangely of cat), the all-gender bathroom, and the mythical creature and fauna bathroom.

I did find a room marked "Management," which I hoped held someone in charge who I could possibly speak to, however, when I opened the door…it was **completely empty.**

Continuing down the hallway, I found the door to this recording studio wide open. When I sat down at the desk in this comfortable leather chair, the seat was still warm, as though someone had just gotten up for a cup of coffee. The equipment was already running, thankfully, because I do not know how to operate it. There are many buttons and lights, all of them blinking and pulsating in rhythms almost steady enough to put one into a trance.

On the desk, there's a photo…another Polaroid, framed, of a man. Oh, he's handsome -- if you like that sort of thing. That is, I'm not quite sure how to describe him. Every time I glance away from the photograph, he seems different, changed somehow.

Is he young, like myself, or is he middle-aged?

Is his hair brunette or blonde? Does he even have hair at all?

Are those tentacles that flicker in the shadows at the edges of the photograph, or tattooed arms?

I do not know his skin color, I do not know his eye color, I do not know anything about this man.

All I know is, he is definitely wearing a tie.

I wonder where this man is right now. Does he even exist anymore? Do any of the citizens of Night Vale still exist? Were they swept away by some catastrophe? Did they flee for their lives? Should I flee Night Vale, or should I look for clues so I can help if they need rescue?

I could start with this room. This recording studio, this…control panel. The buttons are flashing faster now, or perhaps it is because I have not blinked for several minutes. You can forget something like blinking, if you spend too long fixated on an idea. It happened once to someone I know. She has to use Visene now, instead of tears.

There are so many switches on this control panel. So many buttons…very few of them labeled. I am not sure what will happen if I --

_(FX: Switch.)_

 Oh.

_(FX: Switch.)_

 That's the light switch.

_(FX: Switch.)_

That's…actually, I'm not sure what that one does.

_(FX: Switch.)_

Maybe it doesn't do anything.

_(FX: Switch.)_

 Yeah, that one’s definitely a dud.

There is also a series of buttons, listeners. This one is purple, and is marked with a picture of a telephone. Now, let’s try the telephone.

_(FX: Switch.) (FX: Phone dialing.)_

Uh, hello? Well, I’m not sure what that button does, but I don’t think it worked.

The second button is sky blue, with a pair of round glasses on it. Now, I’m going to press the glasses button.

_(FX: Button.) (FX: Light static.)_

Oh, my, this is strange. Suddenly, my vision has gone fuzzy, listeners! I can barely see the studio, just fuzzy blots of color, all covered with grainy dots. I don’t like this button. Hopefully I can figure out how to turn it off…

_(FX: Button.) (FX: Light static fades.)_

That was terrible.

The next button is a lovely chartreuse color. It has a picture of a mushroom cloud. I think I’ll pass on that one.

Ah, here we have the final button. It is large and cherry red, and labeled with the words, “The Weather.” That sounds normal enough. I think I’ll give this one a go.

And now, the weather.

_(THE WEATHER: “Night Valean Greeting” by starstruck-pyromaniac.)_

Since I last spoke to you, listeners, something has changed. I peeked outside and saw that dusk has fallen over Night Vale. Although I was pretty sure I’ve only been in town a few hours, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps time does not pass the same in Night Vale as it does elsewhere.

I have been here too long. I don’t think anyone’s coming anymore. I am no longer certain that anyone can even hear me. I am no longer certain of anything.

All I am certain of is that this town, this place, from the highway to the Ralph’s, the car lot and the Dog Park, is empty. I am alone. Whether I’m alone in this city, or the entire world, I do not know.

But that’s the reality of life. We are all alone. We (if there even is a ‘we’ anymore) stand alone, clinging to the wrinkled, worn, pimpled skin of this planet, laughing at the void above.

Why do we laugh? Why giggle at nothingness?

Because laughing is better than crying. Laughter reminds us that we are not alone, not really, that we have the company of sound. There is companionship in chuckling. There is the music of a sigh, the tune of a smile, the melody of a gasp.

There is love there, lurking in cluttered drawers and in the back of closets, waiting for us to find it.

It reminds us that, while we may be alone, we are not lonely.

And, with that, I leave you, Night Vale, the vacant and the beautiful. I, too, will go into the night, to seek someone – anyone – **no one**.

Goodnight, Night Vale, Goodnight.


End file.
